just like Moby Dick, but shorter and less whale-oriented.

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The Joys of Sicknesses

That is the sound my nose makes today. Normally, my nose does like most noses, providing me with oxygen quietly and efficiently. That is the benefit of having a nose that resembles Toucan Sam’s in size. It is much more efficient when it comes to breathing.

Snnnnrkrkrkrkrrkrkrkkrrrrrrrrrkkkkkk!

At least it used to be more efficient. Now, it is a lot more like trying to breathe through vanilla pudding, only it is much less delicious and you would never want to eat a bowl of what I’m breathing through (I hope).

It all started a few days ago. I was excited as the summer weather had gone away. Anyone who knows me, sort of knows, knows about me, knows nothing about me but has seen me, or has ever been in my general vicinity without realizing it knows how much I hate June, July, and August, or as I like to call them, bad, worse, and “Oh, please make it stop! What did I ever do to deserve this!”

I had a hop, skip, and a jump in my step which, while making me walk very strangely (“Is that man having a seizure while he walks?” “No, I think he just has three different modes of transportation in his step.”), did an excellent job of expressing my joy. I wore jeans and a hoodie, a choice that, just two weeks ago, would have left me as a puddle of human remains on the sidewalk.

That’s when I felt it. The first tickle.

Suddenly, it felt as though a delightful down blanket had become lodged in my throat. I felt tickle after tickle attack the lining of my throatal tube (official medical terminology). My throat began to feel like the victim of a very vicious pillow fight.

In my 24 years on this planet, there are countless mysteries of life I have not yet solved. Where do my socks go when, clearly, I placed each and every one of them into the washing machine? How does Donald Trump get his hair to become a whirlwind of golden, incredibly confusing, locks? Why do we need deodorant for our armpits but our kneepits are just fine without it?

The most confusing mystery of all, though, is where these sicknesses come from. Fortunately, like all of the great detectives, I was able to solve this one.

As I lay on the couch, snkrkrkrrrrrrkkkkking like a champion, my wife came into the room.

“How are you feeling?” she asked like a concerned spouse should.

“SNKKKKRKRKRRRKKRRKKKKK!!!” I replied.

“Well, I hope you feel better,” she said, all of the sympathy in the world. “I had a tickle in my throat a week ago, but it finally went away.”

There it was. Mystery solved. The disease did not come from a random person on the street or a door handle. This particular plague came from my wife doing her best impression of the monkey from “Outbreak.”

Now I’m left trying to deal with the pestilence that she has wrought on our house. I’ve gone through an entire package of Triple Soothing Action Honey-Lemon Halls Cough Suppressants, but to no avail. I’ve taken medicine and slept, hoping that would do the trick. It did not. I’ve even contemplated sticking a vacuum hose up my nose, but I’m fairly certain I read somewhere that this was the way the Ancient Egyptian removed the brains of the dead before mummification. I’m still sort of using my brain, so I would like to keep it intact for now.

Maybe I’ll find a doctor to do some sort of radical procedure where they remove the front of my skull, clean out inside, then sew me back together. I’m sure there must be a doctor in some sketchy island clinic that would give it a shot.

It’s time to consider these drastic measures. I’m fairly certain that if I do nothing, I will eventually be completely enveloped in snot, dying a slow and mucussy death. If you never hear from me again, you can assume that the snot got me and that, somewhere, a mortician trying to prepare me for a closed casket funeral is incredibly grossed out.

On my gravestone, it will have my last words printed.

“Here lies Nathan Badley- SNNNNNNRRRRKRKRKRRKKKKKKK.”

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Tell your friends that their life is meaningless without reading this:

I, too, was blessed with an oversized schnozz. It’s sort of like the nasal version of a “king can” when it comes to flu-related secretions.

By the way, the leg equivalent of an armpit is the groinal area, and if you’ve ever ridden public transportation in August I’m sure you’ll agree that someone somewhere should be put on the leg-pit deodorant project ASAP!